The last traditionally trained elite heavyweight?

Who is the last Ring-ranked heavyweight who almost certainly wasn't using weights, PEDs, supplements, or any other modern training paraphernalia?

 

Well, here is the thing PEDs where in use as early as the Rome Olympic games.

Can we really say Ali didn't use PEDs nor Frazier, Foreman or Norton among others from the 70s?

 

0 elite heavies all arms and limbs and like have you seen even Louis hit the bag????? Needs someone like me in the gym with him tbh I'd teach him some actual boxin

 

Holmes and Foreman maybe?…maybe lol. I don’t really trust anyone after 1980 as far as PEDS goes. I feel like everyone at the top is using. They did use some weights though. Although I think it’s wrong to think past heavyweights did no weights they just used different things like Medicine balls and those pins chopping wood and probably other methods. Foreman chopped a lot of wood

 

He was actually banned by a commission for using diuretics I believe.

 

Maybe 80's Holmes. He was actually quite lazy according to himself. Hated doing all the rigorous running, jumping rope, push ups, sparring, etc. He would butt heads with his trainers frequently.

Holmes philosophy was that there was no sense in getting beat up before you even get in the ring. With his primarily cagey, easy going style he could afford to have this attitude. It probably stemmed from not wanting to turn out like Ali who had many brutal sparring sessions that sometimes ended with him peeing blood or having bad cuts.

Since Holmes was already a thinking fighter to begin with and few of his opponents could match him in wits, he didn't invest as much time into his body like other HW champs who often had a hardcore, spartan approach to training. Holmes did the bare minimum and only cranked things up a notch when a big fight was approaching. I don't believe he lifted in his prime and he doesn't give any sort of clue that he was on anything illegal. Just old school methods and fundamentals.

 

I once had a long visit with Marvin Hart's descendants, some of whom had spent time with the man. He had a garage in Fern Creek, Kentucky, where he lifted weights. The mentioned family members, who lived in New Jersey when I met them, told me that Marvin started lifting weights when he was 11 years old, and continued doing that throughout his boxing career and afterwards. I can't think of any reason why they would've lied to me abut Marvin. That makes me strongly question the idea that the early boxers avoided lifting weights. For whatever reason, they may have preferred to hide that fact from prospective opponents? Who really knows?

 

Harry Greb

His last victories were against T-Rex and Spinosaurus. He lost to Megalodon sadly.

 

It would be awesome if you could write up all of these observations, memories, and oral accounts in history articles of one sort or another. If only to ensure that they enter the stream of "official" (recorded) boxing history instead of getting lost in the forum. They're very valuable, IMO.

 

The forum's probably as good a place as any, Cross. All you have to do is go onto @djanders' profile, click on all his posts and they're all there in one place. Lovely and handy.

It's reassuring to know that all of @moneytheman12's posts are all nice and handy in one place, in case you ever think (wrongly) that a fighter who fought in the 30s might ever be as good as a fighter who fought in the 90s.

I see we had another poster banned today who made a brief, albeit pointless, visit to this very thread - post #3. A lot of this ridiculous modernista trolling has been going on lately. Lockdown has lead to people's social filters going askew and not being able to read a room and know when they're being boring might be a charitable way of interpreting their 'input'.

And to end on a more positive note, I agree with you (broken clocks and all that). DJ's posts, along with a poster called @BurtBienstock (I think) who only recently hung up his laptop, are real gold dust. Real first hand experience of some of our heroes and he has a very matter of fact way of recounting the tales that makes you glad it was him that Jack Dempsey spoke to.

 

John Ruiz and Valuev.

 

Weren’t Ali using peds against Holmes but they didn’t work cos he was already shot to hell by then and if anything made him even worse? He still looked the part though until the fight began.

 

I interpret your question as being:

Who was the first champion who couldn't even theoretically have taken PEDs.

They were around in some form in the 50s, and they worked their way into boxing much later.

I think it highly unlikely that Patterson took them, but it is theoretically possible.

 

Dum bel exercises, have been used in the bare knuckle era.

 

That's not a bad interpretation. I wouldn't go so far as saying impossible, but at least the last fighter there's a lot of evidence AGAINST them using modern stuff.

Guys who could survive a "guilty until proven innocent" standard.